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May 2, 2012

Bow-wow!! Bow-wow!!
As these barking sounds are reverberating endlessly in the Srinagar
streets, the peril created by the voracious barkers is the only keyword
enthralling the length and breadth of every news-daily in Kashmir.
These four-legged canines that are considered faithful elsewhere, are giving a
tough time for the poor two-legged riffraff commuters in Kashmir…shame
on Greedy dogs.

As an add-on to
this ironically rueful happening I would like to share a jolly but heedful
experience. A few days back I joyously started a dog count while riding the
pillion on my brother’s bike. To my amazement I found a whooping count of over 700
dogs, only from Broadway to Soura SKIMS, a distance of not more than 10 Km
thereby gauging the ratio to 70 dogs per Km, minus all those I missed. It was presenting
the scenario of an indefinite curfew declared by the stray dogs. This naïve figure
although a doodle should act a food for thought for the concerned authorities
who are still catching Z’s in their rest rooms with their eyes shut, unaware of
the dog spread that has already turned into a threat.

Freshly there have
been myriad episodes in which the dog menace has crossed every possibility of
tolerance by a sane mind. I feel it needless to mention all the bloodcurdling statistics
caused by these life-threatening newsy ruffians that are already flooding as
the news figures. Eye brows are being raised in this regard and thousands of
questions are being fired where as finding a decent solution seems to be a far
cry. Well cooked theories, opinions and agendas presenting various therapies,
rehabilitations, and some hilarious pied piper stories have been drafted by the
various sections as a remedy for this menace. All of them have successfully captivated
the title of newsworthiness alas nothing seems to be operational in realism. I
am sorry these ideas won’t bring any good to us unless we don’t start on our
own.

A smart attempt in cracking
this enigma will be scrutinizing the root-cause of this nuisance. And the main
reason for the over population of stray dogs that clicks my wisdom is the mammoth
heap of the garbage and rubbish that is engulfing the so called “beautiful Srinagar”. On the similar
lines if we revisit the following great saying we may get a hint:

“Aangan e naad chu karaan hoeen

Bayou mei kun tuih
shin tou

Yem ye wow teim tee
loon

Hoon chuo dapaan wow
wow wow”

This eye-opening
stanza by Sheikh-ul-Alam (R.A) translates into following lines:

“The dogs in the yard are calling

Lo! Brothers lend
me your ear

You reap what you
sow

The dog says bow
wow bow wow”

Well this was the
opinion presented by a legendary long-headed mentor decades ago. The same
message stands before us worth pondering with one single difference that dogs nowadays
bark less and bite more. But the eye-opening revelation answers all the
questions that have popped-up because of the present dog menace in Kashmir. The lines clearly elucidate the verity “You
reap what you sow”. And surely yes the dog menace we are presently suffering
from is the result of our own actions. So any other reason for this bungling
gets underrated. It’s only us who ignorantly started throwing waste here and
there, we transformed public places into garbage dumps, and it’s again us who murdered
our environment by emptying our trash bins in our neighborhood. And
consequently we invited these tail wagging creatures to breed and multiply in
our lap.

Poisoning all the
dogs may be a short term solution to get a good riddance and a good revenge too
but we need to think in longer terms. And the only mantra that will work is
keeping our surroundings clean. We need to understand the importance of proper
sanitation and hygiene. At the same time the concerned authorities are expected
to take proper actions and educate the masses about the same.

Verily God has
created every form of life with a purpose and a proper balance must be
maintained to make the process of nature spotless. The nature by no means acts against
the human development. It’s only our ignorance and voraciousness that brings us
at the receiving end. And this dog menace is a Frankenstein that we have invented
by our own dirty hands and now we have to face the storm.

Lastly I hope my
effort redrafts the opinion of this newsy doggy issue and I look forward for some
rapid action. Else we need to cast another hope of Sheikh-ul-Alam (R.A) revising
his opinion about dogs.